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Terror Orgs Sustained Stinging Blow in Shifa Hospital Battle
Israeli soldiers operate at the opening to a tunnel at Al Shifa Hospital compound in Gaza City, amid the ongoing ground operation of the Israeli army against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, November 22, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo
JNS.org – As more details emerge from the Israel Defense Force’s surprise raid on Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which began on March 19, one thing has become clear: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad absorbed a painful setback that will have strategic reverberations on their capabilities in northern Gaza.
The IDF has categorized the raid as one of its most successful operations in the entire war, due to the number of terrorists who surrendered, the number of terrorists killed in the hospital complex, and the intelligence gleaned from those being questioned.
So far, more than 180 terrorists inside Shifa and around the compound have been killed in the battle, and more than 500 have been arrested, including a string of senior terror commanders.
These Israeli military achievements will have “a huge effect on Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told journalists on March 25, adding that it was the most enemy combatants killed and captured in a single raid in the war, which will cause “severe damage” to terror organizations in the northern Gaza Strip.
“It concerns Hamas very much to know who are the ones that we have arrested,” said Hagari. “And the numbers, the huge numbers, concern them most of all. This is why we keep on pressing. This is our target in the war, dismantling the armed elements, to do that with the operatives and also with the leadership.”
Senior terrorists captured
Senior terrorists captured at Shifa include Bakr Ahmed Bakr Qanita, head of department in Hamas’s Security and Protection Unit; Radwan Younes Kamal Tafesh, head of department in the Weapon Manufacturing Unit of Islamic Jihad; and Hashem Muhammad Hasan Albatash, responsible for the financial affairs of Islamic Jihad’s Gaza City Brigade.
“These terrorists provide us with valuable intelligence during their interrogations that will lead us to further operations,” Hagari said on March 26. “And we keep on doing everything we can to kill the leadership of Hamas. And we are looking at following the intelligence… to other Hamas leaders whom we will capture or kill, I hope, in the future. This is a main effort for the IDF.”
Before launching the operation, the IDF used its intelligence units to learn how Shifa Hospital became, once again, a terror headquarters. This time, instead of the previous destruction of organized military Hamas structures in northern Gaza, the IDF took on smaller Hamas and PIJ cells that had taken over Shifa.
During questioning by the IDF Intelligence Corps’ Unit 504, captured terrorists said they returned to Shifa because they felt they’d be secure there, and because there is electricity, running water and available food.
Each terror organization took control of different hospital wards, intelligence has revealed.
Hamas also took over the offices of the Shifa Hospital director.
The IDF seized envelopes inside the hospital containing 11 million shekels ($3 million) of terror financing.
As such, Hamas and PIJ’s hope to turn the hospital into a terrorist hornet’s nest in northern Gaza has been shattered. There is no safe place for surviving cells in the area, and this message will further demoralize Hamas.
The fight at Shifa is not over. Hundreds of terrorists have been killed and captured after they opened fire at the IDF from the hospital’s courtyard, emergency room, “Qatari Building” and maternity ward.
Firefights continued on Wednesday as terrorists barricaded themselves in sections of the hospital, firing on Israeli forces and hurling explosives at them.
Hamas’s actions have caused heavy damage to the hospital compound. Earlier in the operation, Hamas terrorists in the hospital ordered cells outside of the hospital to fire mortars at the hospital buildings to try and force the IDF to evacuate it, according to Hagari.
Remarkably, the IDF’s operation has seen no harm come to a single patient, doctor, medical staff member, or civilian seeking refuge in the hospital.
The IDF evacuated patients to a safer location where they are receiving medical treatment. The army also provided more than 1,000 types of medications, food and water to these patients, while assisting Palestinian medical teams.
The military is proceeding with caution in an effort to avoid damaging the hospital and to secure its own forces on site, which include Israel Navy commandoes (Shayetet 13) and members of the 401st Brigade and the Nahal Reconnaissance Battalion, operating under the IDF’s 162nd Division, which is managing operations in northern Gaza.
Khan Yunis
On Tuesday evening, the IDF announced that it had initiated what it described as a focused operation at Khan Yunis’s Al-Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza.
The operation began following intelligence on Hamas activity in the hospital and was preceded by the safe evacuation of civilians, patients, and medical teams.
The IDF is demonstrating that not only does it have freedom of movement and access to these sites, but also that Hamas and PIJ will hijack any possible facility to try and continue to function as a terrorist threat.
The post Terror Orgs Sustained Stinging Blow in Shifa Hospital Battle first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.